Civitas

In Ancient Rome, the Latin term (; plural ), according to Cicero in the time of the late Roman Republic, was the social body of the , or

citizen Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection". Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...

s, united by law (). It is the law that binds them together, giving them responsibilities () on the one hand and rights of citizenship on the other. The agreement () has a life of its own, creating a or "public entity" (synonymous with ), into which individuals are born or accepted, and from which they die or are ejected. The is not just the collective body of all the citizens, it is the contract binding them all together, because each of them is a . is an abstract formed from . Claude Nicolet traces the first word and concept for the citizen at Rome to the first known instance resulting from the synoecism of Romans and

Sabines The Sabines (; lat, Sabini; it, Sabini, all exonyms) were an Italic people who lived in the central Apennine Mountains of the ancient Italian Peninsula, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome. The Sabines divid ...

presented in the legends of the

Roman Kingdom The Roman Kingdom (also referred to as the Roman monarchy, or the regal period of ancient Rome) was the earliest period of Roman history when the city and its territory were ruled by kings. According to oral accounts, the Roman Kingdom began wi ...

. According to Livy, the two peoples participated in a ceremony of union after which they were named Quirites after the Sabine town of Cures. The two groups became the first , subordinate assemblies, from ("fellow assemblymen," where is "man", as only men participated in government). The Quirites were the . The two peoples had acquired one status. The Latin for the Sabine Quirites was , which in one analysis came from the Indo-European *kei-, "lie down" in the sense of incumbent, member of the same house. ''City'', ''civic'', and ''civil'' all come from this root. Two peoples were now under the same roof, so to speak. was a popular and widely used word in ancient Rome, with reflexes in modern times. Over the centu